Helmet Testing

[Guest Nogbad]

Well, I read all the articles and see where they are coming from, but I also see the points the Snell guy makes too. Having looked at the information, I think I'm happy as long as I have a decent reputable make and it is full face.

 

I can't see how anyone can argue that an open face helmet could be safer except in some freaky circumstances.

 

My current lid should last until the updated ECE standard comes in.

[Steve G.]

Well, I read all the articles and see where they are coming from, but I also see the points the Snell guy makes too. Having looked at the information, I think I'm happy as long as I have a decent reputable make and it is full face.

 

I can't see how anyone can argue that an open face helmet could be safer except in some freaky circumstances.

 

My current lid should last until the updated ECE standard comes in.

I can tell you that if I was not wearing my Shoei RF1000 last month during my little shunt in California, I would not have a jaw, left ear, or eye. I may still be hooked up to a machine waiting for my family to unhook me. Anyone who rides open face clearly are uninformed, or frickin' stupid.

Ciao, Steve G.

[big J]

Yep,I'm stupid all right.I used to always wear an old open face I bought at a market stall for £8.Loved it,had it for 20 years,primer grey with a saltire sticker on the back.I was truly dismayed when it eventually fell to bits.

I now have an arai,but I preferred the piss pot any day.

 

Btw,modern helmets are all pretty good.I f you header something hard enough,it wont matter if you conform to snell,eu or uk standards,you're toast.

[dlaing]

I can tell you that if I was not wearing my Shoei RF1000 last month during my little shunt in California, I would not have a jaw, left ear, or eye. I may still be hooked up to a machine waiting for my family to unhook me. Anyone who rides open face clearly are uninformed, or frickin' stupid.

Ciao, Steve G.

I thought the same till I read this article that Guzzirider posted here:

http://www.oneida-abate.org/legislative/Articles/cooter.html

But I especially get worried seeing pretty women wearing open face helmets riding ...but to each their own.

Glad you kept your jaw, ear, and eye.

That must have been some impact if an open face would not have protected your eye and or ear.

And the idea of having a jaw and teeth smashed in is not pleasant.

Still if it save me from being hooked up to a machine, braindead, or paralyzed, I guess I'll give up the jaw and teeth.

[Alex-Corsa]

 

Still if it save me from being hooked up to a machine, braindead, or paralyzed, I guess I'll give up the jaw and teeth.

 

Why all Moto GP riders and all other racers (TT, AMA..ect.ect.) wear full face helmets?

[Guest Nogbad]

If you want an example from real life, I used to know a guy who rode an old bonnie and wore an open face. One day on the way home from work he came round a bend, hit a sheep and went over the bars landing on his face. He was in hospital for 6 months and ended up forced to retire from work and he gave up biking. The ambulance men said if he had been wearing a full face, he would probably have walked away.

 

I read the article above, and would suggest that the answer is a softer low peak G full face helmet rather than an open face one, since who wants to use their face as a crumple zone.

 

I am now tending towards the view that the ECE helmet is maybe the better one.

 

QED

[Richard]

I loved the article on open face helmets being safer. Totally made me rethink the rigid full face and almost made me want to drill holes to weaken the face guard.

 

After smashing my jaw in after coming off my mountain bike on the road doing 20 mph and having to endure 3 weeks of hell and baby food you'll definitely never see me riding a motorcycle in an open face helmet. If you want to do it feel free, but I'm just glad I wasn't going any faster, especially as some years later I came off my motorbike at about 35 mph and destroyed the face guard of my helmet. Had I not been wearing a full face I would have had to have major reconstructive surgery, if i had a jaw left. Not a very pleasant thought.

[big J]

fortunatlely,I have nothing to worry about

[Garsdad]

I started with a Vetter helmet- cheap. Had a friend who rode a long time. He said he had been down 7 times in Paris traffic- all but once he smacked the pavement with his face. I have always used a full-face helmet. I only buy ones with the crush foam in the chin bar, and that fit well enough to keep my face from contacting the chin bar in all but the worst direct hit.

 

I have an Arai now, but after the articles I read, I will be looking elsewhere for my next lid. I don't ride at 100+ very much, and my most likely impact is going to be in the 50-mph range I am stuck commuting in. I want a helmet that will better protect me from what I am probably going to face, not one good for a guardrail hit at 150mph that I will never have.

 

In the "old days" people used to want their cars built like tanks. If you could hit another car at 30 mph and have only a scratch on the bumper, that was something to be proud of. All that pride did wonders for your back, neck, and shoulders.

 

The reason people survive horrendous wrecks today is because we discovered crumple zones. They reduce the g-forces on your body during impact. A helmet that crushes a bit at 45-mph and 2g's will save my brain more than one that won't start to deform until 4 g's or higher. Interestingly, most of the helmets tested that reduced the g-load at slower speed impacts performed well at higher speeds, too. The only area of concern would be multiple hits to the same region of the head. Again, not highly likely.

 

The reason the GP riders all wear Snell- 1) they are going very fast all the time, and need the maximum high-speed protection they can get. I'm not likely to ever get the Tenni up to 130 mph, and they corner there. 2) They wear what they are paid to wear. Rossi et al make a shitload of money for wearing the gear they wear. I don't expect a guy driving a race car to have the same gear I wear driving to work; I don't expect the guy racing the bike to wear the same stuff I do riding to work. The differences in probable impacts are just too huge for it to make sense.

 

Just my 2 cents, take it for what its worth. I'm gong to be replacing the Arai soon... can someone get me a Euro-spec Arai? I love the way it fits, and how quiet it is. If only it would do the best job of protecting my brain...

[dlaing]

If you want an example from real life,

The contrary examples are from real death, so we might not be hearing from them.

I read the article above, and would suggest that the answer is a softer low peak G full face helmet rather than an open face one, since who wants to use their face as a crumple zone.

Yah, I hope the retractable face of my Arrow convertible offers a softer low peak G (whatever that is???) than the helmets in that study.

Maybe the key is to land more on your forehead than your chin...as if you can control such things.

Or maybe if there was two inches of impact foam in front of my nose and chin.

[pete roper]

I'm not sure about the current tests but *most of the older ones seemed to be based on a penetrative type blow, ie, a sharp thing hitting the shell and seeing if it would penerate. This is a classic case of allowing some f*cking bonehead public servant get a hold of the reins!

 

Someone, probably back in the sixties, was asked to look at producing a protective helmet. At that time there was even less consultation than there is now! Some bloody idiot in Whitehall who was probably more familiar with hunting with hounds thought that every time someone fell off a motorbike they smacked their scone on a sharp thing and consequently died. So! The penetrative test! Brilliant!!

 

The thing is if your head comes to a sudden stop at ANY speed over about 20MPH your brain will spin in your skull and crush the medulla oblongata and snap the spinal cord which will kill you in exactly the same way as hanging did, or does, in those countries still barbaric enough to use it as a punishment.

 

Any amount of compressible material will help but the main protection a helmet offers is not penetrative, or *directly* absorbtive of the forces involved in an accident, it is abrasion resistance COUPLED with the absorbtive protection against concussion of the fall from the height of a motorbike seat. Imagine you were trussed up like a turkey and then pushed over from vertical with no way to cushion your fall. Your head would smack on the ground and you'd suffer serious damage. THAT is what the foam in your helmet protects against, not a lot else. The shell is there to prevent abrasion, to put it bluntly, it gets worn away rather than your head as you slide up the road!!

 

I ALWAYS advocate wearing good protective gear. The most importnt thing about a helmet is that a.) it fits and b.) it offers the best protection available in the event of a spill. That isn't the sort of protection offered by having a shell impregnable to a spike with 20Kg on it dropping on the top of it. OK, I'll grant that if you were an anorexic dwarf on a unicycle riding full-tilt at a medieval pike at the level of your helmet it *might* help you. I remain skeptical. For most of us it is about as much use as being told we have to ride around with a rotating toast-rack on our heads!

 

You need a solid shell to absorb abrasion, you need decent, well fitting foam, to absorb shock. After that it's in the lap of the Gods.. Personally one of my main reaquirements is comfort as this allows me to remain alert, (The world needs lerts!) 'Comfort does NOT include wearing a plastic replica of a Wermacht helmet with a spike on the top covered in fake cow fur, but maybe I'm odd that way

 

Pete

[Guzzirider]

Hmmmmm who knows. The best idea is probably not to crash at all, or if anyone is really worried about it then buy a Volvo.

 

I hold my hand up to riding without a lid in the USA- its just one of those holiday things like when you go to Amsterdam, you smoke dope because it is decriminalised, or if you go to Thailand you have to... well you know.

 

So when I went to Arizona I just had to ride without a lid purely because I was allowed to, and its something I can't do at home.

 

The silly thing was that I took it off just before the crappiest road ever with loads of bends covered in loose stones and gravel, and I rode as carefully as I ever have done in my life because I felt really exposed.

 

Now I am back in Blighty I am Mr Safety again.

 

Guy

[Lex]

Just in case there is any doubt left about open face helmets being safer I'll add my one and only helmet test. I screwed up going in to turn 8 at Sears Point (now Infinion) at roughly 80MPH and wound up on the outside of turn 8A. I don't remember much about the parts inbetween but based on accounts and my helmet I flipped end over end, I have three sets of scratches on the helmet, which I keep to remind me to wear a helmet. Two of the scrates are in the back but one is across the top front, face shield and chin bar. I'm no prize in the looks department but all of the parts are in roughly the normal positions. If I had been wearing an open face helmet that day and had, somehow, not been killed I'd have a face so ugly it would make little kids so scared they cry.

 

It should be illegal for these morons to keep repeating obvious crap like the helmets are dangerous or full face helmets are dangerous. If adults choose to not wear a helmet I understand they have a point but sending out lies like this is not far from shouting fire in a crowded theater or advocating driving drunk.

 

Second, in one of the rare times I'll disagree with Pete Roper, the helmet standards are only partly the result of bureaucratic bungling. You have to remember two things: The first is that they were developed for race car drivers (see Snell Foundation) and the second is that nobody knew much in the fifties and sixties. At least here in the US we still have standards based on the orginal standards and ideas from back then, I'd be surprised if things were much different in the UK.

 

I'll stand by my advice: Buy the best fitting, most comfortable full face helmet you can afford and wear it every time you ride.

 

Lex

[mike wilson]

I can tell you that if I was not wearing my Shoei RF1000 last month during my little shunt in California, I would not have a jaw, left ear, or eye. I may still be hooked up to a machine waiting for my family to unhook me. Anyone who rides open face clearly are uninformed, or frickin' stupid.

Ciao, Steve G.

 

Or have a head so big that they can only just get it into a full face lid and that only after removing a significant part of the padding.........

 

Nasty man.

 

 

8-)))

[mdude]

the helmet standards are only partly the result of bureaucratic bungling. You have to remember two things: The first is that they were developed for race car drivers (see Snell Foundation) and the second is that nobody knew much in the fifties and sixties. At least here in the US we still have standards based on the orginal standards and ideas from back then, I'd be surprised if things were much different in the UK.

 

 

that's why I always check the Motorrad tests, the thouroughness and ojectivity of the tests in this magazine is borderline anal (german, remember), and no official testing agency can compete with that. that goes with the tyre tests as well.